Family Studio Workshop: Mike Kelley’s Kandors

Families will construct their own miniature cities from air-drying clay, colored craft sticks, recycled materials, and tempera paint inspired by the translucent resin cities currently on view in ‘Mike Kelley: Kandors 1999 – 2011’. Kelley’s sculptures, based on Superman’s home city, provide an aesthetically and conceptually rich point of departure for any budding artist to tap into their own unique imaginations and engineering skills. The workshop will be led by Matt MacFarland, contemporary artist, cartoonist, and educator. This event is free, however, reservations are recommended. Click here to register. About Kandors Initiated by Kelley in 1999, the Kandors series comprises numerous representations of Superman’s birthplace, the city of Kandor. The popular Superman story recounts the adventures of an alien being sent to Earth as a baby to escape the total destruction of his home planet, Krypton. However, it turns out that Kandor was not, in fact, destroyed. Shrunk and bottled by the villainous Braniac, the futuristic city was later rescued by Superman and protected under a bell jar in his sanctuary, the Fortress of Solitude. Kelley chose twenty diverse examples from the myriad two-dimensional renderings of the sci-fi city in order to create three-dimensional Kandors. In these works, he explores the formal properties of translucency and reflection by casting the Kandors in colored resins, setting them in tinted glass bottles, and illuminating them like reliquaries within specifically designed settings.